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myself.
    “I think I deserved that,” she said with a wry grin, before raising her chin toward the sun and closing her eyes.
    Taking the hint that our study time was over prematurely, I crossed my arms behind my head and enjoyed the sunshine until the bell rang for fifth period.
    That afternoon, I searched the bulletin board outside the locker room to find that my name was one of two selected to join the varsity tennis squad. I was relieved. Coach wanted the team to meet after school five days a week starting tomorrow, to be excused only for illness or student-body political duties.
    Over the next two weeks, Sarah and I saw a lot of each other. During practice, we participated in a ton of group drills, though we rarely played against each other. Most of the hours we spent together were in preparation for Wilcox’s Othello challenge, and as long as she maintained a two-arms’ length distance between us, I was able to function relatively normally. She had a good sense of humor, and we laughed a lot. Cattiness wasn’t one of her attributes, unlike some popular girls I’d met at other schools. She was down-to-earth and fun to be around. I would miss our time together once the project was over.
    And contrary to most of my previous project partners, Sarah was sharp. She backed each piece of plot analysis she performed with several quotes and followed through on every aspect of the assignment we’d divvied to her. More than that, her devil’s advocacy of my positions helped me refine our paper and presentation materials into some of my best work to date. Of all my project collaborators, Sarah was the first to demand more from me than I demanded of myself, the first to really earn the term “partner.” I finally understood the benefits of having one.
    The day we were scheduled to present, we met in the quad before first period. I’d been the first to get there, hopping up on the table and putting my feet on the bench. I read The Great Gatsby while I waited. It helped me relax if I didn’t feel I was cramming information into my head before a test or presentation. Five minutes later, the table slightly dipped with extra weight, and the outside of Sarah’s thigh brushed against mine as she sat next to me.
    “Hey. Ready for our big presentation?” She nudged my shoulder like a brother or cousin.
    “You’re the one doing the speechifying. Are you?”
    “If we don’t get the best grade on this project, I’ll remove my name from Homecoming court,” Sarah said confidently. “Assuming I get nominated.”
    “Ha ha,” I replied, knowing how much she was hoping to be voted queen. I didn’t bother to respond to her comment about getting nominated since it was a no-brainer.
    “I’m serious.” She looked at me assuredly, gauging my response. Her face was a foot away from mine, her light-blue eyes mesmerizing, her lips tantalizingly moist. I couldn’t speak.
    I turned away. “Guess we’ll have to win then.”
    “We will. You going, by the way?”
    “Of course. It’s my grade on the line, too.”
    “To Homecoming, silly.”
    Ugh. The only person I wanted to go to Homecoming with was the girl sitting next to me, and that was wrong for so many reasons. “No,” I said definitively.
    “No one’s asked you, or you’ve turned down your hordes of admirers?”
    “You’re so amusing, Perkins.” My tone was anything but amused.
    “Which is it?”
    “Does it matter? I’m not going. It’s not my kind of thing,” I said, with mounting irritation.
    “Your kind of thing being staying up until three AM , reading Shakespeare?”
    I held up my book. “Fitzgerald, actually.”
    “I heard Kip was going to ask you. He didn’t?”
    “Perkins, lay off. It’s not my scene.”
    “He thinks you’re pretty special, you know.”
    “Well, I’m glad you two have a great time talking about me behind my back.” I nearly winced at the alarming clip at which I was regressing into childishness. She couldn’t know what buttons